Is that US costs? Refinery acquisition costs? FUD?
If refinery acquisition costs, it tells us nothing, other than we were in a financial bubble, or rather, because we were in financial bubble, the true meaning of this graph is unknown.

(I sent you an email)

Is "asymptotic" the correct word to us to describe the situation? If you do use the term, then you are implying that there is a daily production rate that we cannot exceed. So that something like 1/(x-xmax) turns into a singularity at the x=xmax asymptote.

Lots of possibilities here. Factor in what Krugman had to say about such a curve regarding multiple equilibria that Khebab pointed out further below in the thread:

Just for fun, I created a quick plot of the number of bushels of corn required to purchase a barrel of oil (using the $/bushel cost) plotted against annual average oil production since 1960.

You can see the artificial peak of the oil embargoes of the 1970's in the data. But notice that on a commodity swap basis it is (in general) costing using more corn (equivalent) as the production flattens as we approach 75 million BPD of C+C.

Of course, one othe things noted about the agricultural production is the yield (and the variation each year). Here is the amount of land area production required for a barrel of oil using the cost equivalent method above.

It's the number of acres of corn production required for a barrel of oil, considering both the yield and the respect price of corn and oil. The curve is slightly different indicating the effects of lower yields in the early years. However, the general characteristic is the same.

A picture is worth a thousand words!
G

No, but this is:
(I don't go with fancy backgrounds, or non-zero scaled axes)

Not quite so impressive. The loops pre 1986 are the two OPEC oil shocks. The run-up after that remains pretty startling

Data from:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/fsheets/real_prices.xls
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/merquery/mer_data.asp?table=T11.01b

G.

Inflation adjustment is shown in a post above this one. I would point out, though, that part of the effect we see is the fall of the dollar relative to other currencies and then its sudden rise. I will post those separately.

I would also point out that inflation adjusted data does not provide much insight into different periods of time that may refelct completely different social-economic conditions at both micro and macro conditions. The Raleigh of 1973 where in just going two miles from the campus I was in to rural/agricultural farmland is a thing of the past. And the OPEC oil embargo price shock of 1973, where gasoline prices at the local Starflite gas stations went from $0.199/gallon to $0.439/gallon (where you fed dollar bills into a vending machine type reader) does not necessarily reflect a "constant" expenditure percentage for our lives. What we saw this past summer(2008), in terms of cost cause and effect might be similar, yet other forces were at work then and now.

BTW, the background is the Delaware Bridge on the way to the NJ Turnpike.

The raw data I used is:

Refiners Aquisition Cost (composite) found at:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_rac2_dcu_nus_m.htm

The monthly production data are from the Monthly Energy Review, specifically Table 11b (Under International Petroluem) at:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/merquery/mer_data.asp?table=T11.01b

That's the "easy" data to retrieve. I'm working on (in my spare time) extracting the cost and production data even further back in as fine a resolution as we have here (that requires more time in the NCSU Library). The EIA has annual values available.

Here is the same data converted to € from 1994 to present.

The production data and the cost data all on one chart with $ and €.